Her Protector
by Haru Itonami
Summary: Staring into a mirror too much usually only made Sakura dizzy. But this time, she watches in surprise as a red-headed boy steps out and claims that he is there to protect her from the Akatsuki. And wait. She's a jinchuuriki? '...What's that...' GaaSaku AU


_**Her Protector**_

_A/N:_

_A new fanfic! Well, this one's GaaSaku. I made up the summary before the story -.-;; That's the kind of person I am._

_Enjoy!_

Summary: Staring into a mirror too much usually only made Sakura dizzy. But this time, she watches in surprise as a red-headed boy steps out and claims that he is there to protect her from the Akatsuki. And wait. She's a jinchuuriki? "...What's that?" GaaSaku AU

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

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I stared at my reflection. Long, pink hair. Green eyes with dark, thick eyeliner. Goth clothes - black, baggy trousers with chains and a black, tight top cut off at the midriff with a black mesh shirt over the top. Black shoes sticking out from under the trousers, black fingerless gloves. It's unsurprising that I'm unpopular, really. I mean, look at the _it_ girl, Ino. She's blonde, beautiful, wears stunning clothes and lots of make-up. She's everything that I'm not. And she's exactly the kind of girl that the _cool _guys look for in our school. And then there's the _emo_-ish jock, Sasuke. I used to fancy him so bad. But he's a jerk. The mere thought of him makes me puke now.

I wish our school was not _normal_. Or at least that it didn't have all these labels. Problem is, no-one seems to care. There's the sluts, jocks, nerds, and outcasts. Quite obviously I'm the latter.

But enough about me and the horrors of my life! I needed to get to school NOW or else I'd be later than Kakashi-sensei. Now that, would be terrifying.

But what I really want is to scamper away and climb back into bed, then fall asleep and never wake up, _ever_ again. At least that way I wouldn't have to ignore school. Ignoring is hard work, you know! And ridiculously boring.

Not to mention that everyone hates me.

...Alright, not everyone, but I'm not counting ramen-boy. He's quite nice, but pretty annoying.

So yes. Everyone hates me.

It doesn't help matters that I live alone. My parents...Let's say, I wasn't meant to be born, and was abandoned at an adoption place, and now I live in my own apartment at 16. Nothing too tragic - ramen-boy's an orphan who's Dad got killed in an accident and his mother died in childbirth. Now him, one should feel sorry for. It totally screwed up his sense of fashion, and now he wears neon orange and blue together, everywhere. And he has whiskers (I have yet to find out if they are real or not). But me? I'm fine, living alone. It never bothers me, since you can't miss what you never had.

It pains me that my hair is such a gentle colour, sometimes. I'm anything but gentle. Always in the middle of any fight...Yup, that pretty much sums me up. But somehow, I can't bring myself to dye it. So I don't, 'cuz I'm different. Different to all those idiots at school. Just simply different.

I felt a familiar buzz in my head, indicating that I'd been staring at the mirror for long enough. If I don't look away soon, I'll get dizzy, and If I keep on looking, I'll faint...

That's it! I can faint for a little while, which means a little more rest and a little less school, plus with a good excuse!

I stare at the mirror intently. My brows furrow in concentration and I don't blink. My eyes well up with moisture and a few tears escape. I wipe them away quickly off my porclain skin, in case they leave tracks, staring all the while.

I carry on staring. I'm starting to get a little dizzy. This is good. Mentally, I increase the intensity about threefold. I feel like my whole body is about to fall, but my legs are firmly stuck to the ground. Just a bit more now!

I see a bright light. Maybe it's a side effect? Keep staring!

The bright light does not disappear. Instead...Something appears _from _it. Forgetting all about my task, I stare in shock as a strangely dressed boy with hair the colour of blood and the kanji for 'love' on his forehead steps out of the mirror, right into my room! Is this a side effect?

Either I'm hallucinating, or simply asleep. I'm getting the feeling it's neither. Sadly.

He stares at me while I stare at him. I can't seem to make a coherent sentence. It's like his _eyes_ are looking straight into my soul, if you believe in that type of thing! It's so creepy!

"Sakura?" He finally asks in an even tone, which made it sound like he was stating it. I nod dumbly.

I have no last name, considering the fact that my family is unknown...Hold on. How's this guy know my name? Maybe a guess, I mean my hair and eyes do remind one of Sakura blossoms and green leaves...Who am I kidding. He nods back at me and just stands there, arms crossed. I take a step sidewards, and he follows me.

"Umm...Sorry for being blunt, but...Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my apartment?" He was silent and for a moment I thought he had fallen asleep standing.

"Sabaku no Gaara. I'm protecting you." I was getting extremely weirded out. A stranger - boy or no boy - had just appeared from my bedroom mirror, introduced himself as Gaara and is apparently _protecting me?_

**We don't need anyone protecting us, Shannaro! **My inner me screamed and I readily agreed. Putting other matters aside for now, I started arguing. Just like I usually do. Way to go, Sakura. Not.

"I can protect myself," I defended. "I'm good at fighting!"

"Are you?" His voice held a hint of amusement and I was about to ask what exactlyhe found so funny, but he suddenly disappeared and reappeared not a second later behind my back, something sharp pressed against my throat. He spoke softly into my ear with a voice that sent a wave of shivers down my spine. "..._Are you_?" He repeated. I was rooted to the spot, and I could barely move my lips to say something back.

"N-no..." I stammered, hoping this was the answer he was looking for. He gave a small 'hn' sound and pulled away the strange knife. It looked like a ninja weapon, the Kunai. So I _can _remember something from history! Ha! In your face, Anko-sensei!

As soon as the knife was at a safe distance away from me, I gathered power in my fist and suddenly puched a surprised Gaara. "Gotcha!"

Except that I hadn't. My hand was encased in something scratchy...Sand. My superior punch was blocked by a wall of floating _sand!_ I almost screamed.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Gaara said calmly, a sure sign that he was annoyed. "Because I am far stronger than you, which is why I am here to protect you from the Akatsuki. Remember that," he finished, and some sand crept up my legs, squeezing them quite harshly as a warning before receeding. I, although being seriously freaked out, still managed to blush. For heavens' sake, I'm being molested by sand! What the hell!?

"T-the Akatsuki?" I queried, hoping to get an answer that actually made sense.

"They're after you, because you're a jinchuuriki in this world. So I needed to come to this world to protect you." Alright, that sentence made sense, _if _you're a loony piece of cheese. Which I'm not. So, apparently I'm a jinchuuriki...

"...What's that?" I asked. Ok, so I could not come up with an intelligent response! Get over it! He rolled his eyes at me. I was going to get angry at him, but then remembering the sand...It didn't seem like such a good idea.

"I am the Kazekage of Sunagakure. The leader of my village," he explained for idiots like me. "I live in a world of ninja. And a ninja outlaw group is after the tailed beasts. They have all but two, one of which is inside you. So we must do all that is in our power to stop them from getting the two tailed beasts, for two reasons. one is, that during the process, you die. Two, is that if they get all the tailed beasts, it's the end of not only my world but also yours. And I am your body guard."

Wow. I could not believe he just said so much. Nevermind that I didn't believe half of it...But then again, if he managed to get into my room through a mirror from a different world, why not? There's just one thing I didn't like.

"You say there's a tailed beast inside me. Are you implying that I'm a monster?" I demanded. He froze for a millisecond, before saying slowly,

"No, I am not."

I nodded in approval. "I still don't understand most of what you're saying, but apparently you are a ninja from a different world who is here to protect me because I have a beast inside me. Right?" He confirmed it with a positive noise.

"Well, why can't I feel it there, then?" I asked, happy in finding the loophole. If people have demons inside them, the demons come out on a full moon or something like that!

Gaara looked at me like I was mad.

"Because It's sealed inside you, and the seal is intact," he said in that even tone of his. I scowled.

"Right...So, what demon do I have inside me?" I asked, a little curious.

"The Yonbi, Ookami no Tsuki," he answered. So apparently I have a four-tailed wolf demon sealed inside of me. Wonderful.

"Two more questions. One: How do you know that it's inside of me, and Two: How will you protect me in those weird clothes with that gourd, because people dressed like that aren't socially acceptable around here, and how will you protect me when I'm in school?" I asked. Oops, that was three questions. Nevermind.

"I can feel it inside of you, because I used to have a demon and I can sense other demons because of this, and because I can sense different chakras as well. Yours is definitely sharing that of the Yonbi. Didn't you think it strange, to be hated by everyone wherever you went, ever since birth?" he questioned. "Humans can feel the distant chakra of the demon inside of you."

"Naruto doesn't hate me," I instantly replied. Oh, god. First I was talking to myself about this and saying ramen-boy doesn't count, and now I'm bringing him up in the same argument? Damn my ego!

"That's because, in the ninja world, Naruto is also a tailed demon, the Kyuubi no Kitsune. He's just like you," Gaara said dryly.

"Oh...I always did wonder...Hold on. If there is a ninja version of Naruto in that world, is there one of me?" I felt bad for bombarding Gaara with questions - he looked tired already, with all those insomnia rings - but what could I do? I was just a normal person until this guy suddenly showed up! ...Okay, not really normal either way. When I finished asking my question, he flinched.

"There was," he said stonily. It all clicked in my head.

"I died, didn't I?" My voice was soft compared to before. One doesn't always hear of their death while they are still alive. Gaara nodded grimly. "Does that mean there's also someone like you in this world?" I suddenly wondered. But then, I suddenly saw a flashback of a newspaper headline I had seen lying in some dumpster a few months ago. "Scratch that, nevermind," I said hastily. By how his eyes narrowed, I guessed Gaara knew that he was dead in this world. Either he was really perceptive, or my face is see-through. I hope it's the former.

"For your second...Questions," he empathised the plural, "You will buy me some clothes and I will walk around with you in public. As for when you are at school...I shall watch from the shadows. I'm a shinobi," he said, obviously confident in his abilities. I shrugged. What with our one-sided fight a few minutes prior, he had a right to be.

"Alright then. You can go get some trousers and t-shirts from my room to wear, they'll probably fit if you take the baggier ones. And leave your gourd here. If you want sand, put it into one of my spare black backpacks and take it with you. Mind you, you'd better show me that ninja world some day. I wanna see ramen-boy as a ninja," I chuckled to myself. "Get changed and catch up. I'm off to school." School...Gragh! I was officially two hours late!

That's a lot.

But I had to go, since after I skipped too much last year, they warned me that the council will take away the support money that I'm supplied with every month for buying supplies and paying rent. Thus, I must show up whenever I'm not ill. The trouble is, I'm literally ill only about once in five years. Sucks.

At this point, Gaara emerged from my room in pretty much exactly what I had advised him to wear, even the black backpack. Turns out he got changed so fast that I didn't even make it out the door.

And so we started walking the half-mile long walk to school. Yeah, I live pretty close, but that's 'cause I'm lazy.

Can you honestly say it's my fault with a clear conscience? A girl's gotta get her beauty sleep, and according to Gaara, I also have the hard job of carrying around a demon inside of me. Phew!

-

I was in a strangely good mood all day. Probably because I knew I was being watched over from the shadows, and that there was some-one that didn't try to put chewing gum in my hair or throw up into my locker.

That didn't stop Ino from trying to ruin my mood, though. Nothing ever seems...To stop her. Let's skip a few boring lessons, and go to lunchtime...

I was just washing my hands in the girls' toilets, when suddenly about half of my class flooded in. There were about ten people, and though they were girls, it was unfortunate that they outnumbered me. Unfortunate for me, because I knew what was coming.

Many of them were Ino-cohorts, others simply there for a laugh.

"Well, well, well. Sakura. How happy we are to see you." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. _Good god, _why did she have to sound so unoriginal, like the evil people in the movies? Probably something to do with the fact that she _was_ evil.

"Since we're here, we might as well clear away this waste of space, right guys?" she said in a mock-pitying voice to her cronies. I hissed.

"Go ahead and try!" Getting into a ready to fight position, I put my hands into fists and bent my knees. Ino smirked and walked straight up to me, redying a hand to slap my face. As the delicate fingers sailed through the air, I could have almost laughed maniacly. Her movement was so goddamn slow! She must have honestly thought I was weak. Haha. She didn't know how much practice I've had in fighting. Sure, Gaara was way out of my league, but here - in the girls' toilets - the tables turned. Before she even managed to touch me, she recieved a full blow to her stomach as I crouched slightly to dodge the slooooow slap. Ino stumbled back, winded.

The problem is, although I landed a hit, I forgot all about the other 10-or-so battle hungry girls. Ugh.

Luckily, just then, the bell rang. I dodged past the momentarily distracted people and out of the room. Grabbing my bag, I headed off to my next class, Biology. Finally! The only decent class in the entire school schedule!

For a second, I thought, _Why hadn't Gaara come to help me out with those girls? _But then I realised how stupid that was. Because 1. It would reveal his cover 2. I wasn't fighting the Akatsuki 3. I wasn't in a life-threatening situation, and even then a fourth reason popped into my head, 4. Because he thought I could handle it.

Wow. He actually believed in me. Hopefully. And even if he didn't...

It was a nice feeling.

-

There are a few reasons I like Biology, and homework is not one of them. I didn't mind the homework too much...But there was a lot of it. It would take away some of my precious time, which I could be spending on...

Studying Biology.

Okay, I was a human-body science freak. I can't help thinking that if in Gaara's world there was such a thing medical ninja, then I was one. I'll have to ask him.

Oh yeah, and another thing I will now be adding onto my daily to-do list: Practice fighting techniques whenever I can.

Because although Gaara is apparently there to protect me, be my protector - whatever, I still need to learn how to hold my own properly. Sure I could beat Ino, but if the bell hadn't gone when it had, things would have gotten messy. I needed a technique that could help me to snuff out my opponents nice and quick. Not necessarily kill, just snuff out.

It seemed that I had been talking to myself and saying these things outloud, because the next thing I know, Gaara had materialised into my room in a swirl of sand, proposing that I learn how to use senbon and manipulate pressure points.

I, naturally, had no idea what he was on about.

So that is why I was on my laptop, searching up what he had been telling me about. Actually, it's pretty interesting. For example, applying the correct amount of pressure onto a pressure point on the body could do various wonders, such as knock a person out or temporarily disable the limb. And if you were superhuman or a strong ninja like Gaara, you could disable the limb permenantly, and then Gaara told me that if you apply this 'chakra' energy that ninja use, you could even kill...Well, I didn't question further about that.

I quickly sketched down the positions of the pressure points into a notebook and vowed to learn them.

Then, senbon. I did a google search and it came up with...Long needles, apparently used by ninja also. Geez, with all of this, I might just become a ninja! (But hey...That may not be such a bad idea. Maybe I can get Gaara to teach me some ninja moves! Maybe I can go back with him into the ninja world! ...I wish. Still, might come true. Never know.)

So I checked out some of the links, sighed, and in the end made a life-sized poster of the human body, drawing in all the bones, organs, etc. Even the muscles, though I only did the outlines for them, because they covered everything else up. On it, I marked pressure points in a neon yellow and vital points where one could throw senbon in red. When I finished, I hung it on the wall. It didn't look too bad! Although it had taked me ages, and I still had plenty of homework. Well, the homework I could do in the morning, if I actually managed to get up early enough.

But there was a slight problem. The pressure points were great, and everything. But the vital points...Simply put, I have no senbon.

"You don't have any senbon."

Well, thanks for stating the obvious, Mr.I-know-it-all! Why did you even suggest them to me, then? "No, I don't. Excuse me for not living in the ninja world."

"Here," he said calmly as if I had said nothing, and threw me a medium-sized box. I was surprised, and only with my quick reflexes did I catch it.

"Open it," he commanded. So I did. And, guess what, inside were senbon! Not just ten or twenty. There must have been at least a _thousand_!

"Umm...Are these for me?" I asked, not quite sure if it was.

"No, it's for the man in the moon," he stated sarcastically. "I don't use them, but being the Kazekage, I'm forced to carry them around." Oh great, so now I was doing him a favour, was I? On the other hand, he had given them to me for free...

"You hold them like this," Gaara demonstrated. I copied expertly. I was good at copying things, even voices. I suppose it was a natural-born instinct.

"And you throw them like this." Gaara had his elbow bent, but then outstretched the arm slowly, showing me the motion. Then, he threw it. I had a had time noticing its path, which is very strange because I see things very clearly most of the time, even things that move _really _fast. But then, this is Gaara we're talking about.

The senbon imbedded into the left eye socket of the poor man on my poster.

"Practice your aim and speed until you get it. It is important to think of not throwing the senbon, but flicking it away from you with ease, as if it is inferior. That will make everything easier." Then, he disappeared in another swirl of sand.

I, meanwhile, was flicking senbon at the poster on my wall, attempting to hit the vital points. So far, I had managed to hit three out of five. Not too bad!

Throwing more and more senbon, I gradually became accustomed to the movement. I was soon doing it without much thought being put into it, hitting almost each one. I was doing good, if I say so myself. I'll be doing this more often, I decided, putting away about 50 senbon into my trouser pocket. I could also put some in my hair if need be, I realised. I'd never be unarmed. Interesting!

Then, making sure Gaara wasn't around, I changed and got ready for bed. Doing the usual stuff that one does before sleeping. Brush teeth, shower...So on.

As I cuddled up into my blankets, I fell asleep and dreamt.

But this dream was strange, much more different to what I usually see. I was, believe it or not, on the moon. I moonwalked around for a little while before jumping into a nearby crater on an impulse. Strangely enough, I hit some metal bars before I hit the bottom. Looking underneath me, I found that it wasn't just some metal bars, but a whole _cage _that I was sitting on. It was sealed with a piece of flimsy paper, but somehow, I knew the paper was not as delicate as it looked...

That's when I saw a pair of glowing white eyes in between the bars.

_Oh shit._

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